LO FOR HELLO

Lo for hello. Gbye for goodbye. Lv for love. Thx for what should have been about gratitude. He signed letters with half his name. Left thoughts alone - a sentence with the word think and he'd stop right there. He never allowed himself a moment of quiet thought. An entire life of walking along a cliff's edge - arms out, touching nothing, touching no one, and the abbreviations - lo, gbye, lv - balance. If he had let himself wallow on a word, let the quiet crescent of adieu take him, then off the cliff he goes.

The day he killed himself was the day his letters grew large. Letters smattered with Hello for hello. I love you all very much for I love you all very much. These complete sentences that were complete surrenders over and over, a million explosions on paper - lead giving way where his tears landed.

I asked his friend, at the funeral, after the reception, the terrible food, and he replied: what took him so long.

Her fingers tightened its hold on your hand, anchoring, when she finally finished.

She was wearing blue sweatpants, the one with the hole near her left knee, braless, hair knotted like those coastlines; pistachio shells between you both on the table, orange peels shaped like bowls and curled like small fists. She moved around the house unencumbered by beauty's cage, which is a thing you would never say aloud because she would hit you with a cushion and she'd be right to.

I'm disgusting. She said, when you looked around at the evidence of your love.

You're not

I'm compost.

Your fingers trace the pallor of her small hand, dainty and you say: the pistachio shells, the orange peels, that hole on your much-loved sweatpants, you think I get the worst of you - I love you. I loved you ever since you began letting the pistachio shells linger longer, the perfect orange peel bowls, entering this animal-you wandering this tall grass arena of ours, because for the first time, you believed in love - as have I.

Her lips land on yours. Domesticity accords: anytime, anywhere.

It's clumsy and fast - she lands on her back on the counter, and you pull your waistband down; pull her sweatpants just a little over her ass, part her panties to the side to her glistening cunt - and you push in.

Move

You obey, the flutter of her cunt giving way as you thrust up into her. You do it again and she's clenching around like you're meant for her.

Hand dropping between her legs, fingers pressing down in tight circles. Her heels dig in, breasts bounce erratically, and her fingers tangle in your hair.

I love you, you say to her skin. I love you, I love you, I -

And she gushes: back arching off the counter, cunt milking you, soaking your thighs, body trembling. And the sight of her being undone, ruined, that animal-her - you bury yourself as deep as you can go into her cunt. Pulses of hot cum into her.

That she says, was the worst of me

The both of you share a laugh.

She let you into her world for a reason - a night, hot and sweaty from coupling bodies together until muscles give out and not the mental urge to kiss every jutting bone of her body, every crease and every hollow; she:

Everytime I'm in an airport. I think to kill the kid stuff, act my number, set fire to the clutter - i'd be beautiful beyond buying, fix my problems with property and fame. Then, I think of you, home with the dog, the windows open as we wake to the dewy air. I want to be back where I am again, go through the whole thing again. We're small and flawed and I want to kiss your moles.

He was protecting himself with the short words.

I know.

If he'd ever said the whole thing - he'd have to feel it. The slide of the word - l-o-v-e. lv is quicker than love - luuuuv. She compared the length of the two words.

You could see her breathing, diaphragm expanding. The pleasure of hearing her breathe, of having her under that roof, asleep or almost. The pleasure of seeing her sleep - face gently pressed to the pillow, bare-faced, nostrils sizing up and down, was as precious as that of feeling her live. The aliveness and stillness.

I'm not like him. I don't think I'm like him.

You're not.

How do you know.

These forms, you wanted to tell her - sweatpants, shells, knotted hair, stained cotton - in lonely rooms and in hours of weariness, you felt sweet sensations, in the blood, in the heart. The way she sits in a chair with one leg crossed, the way she peels an orange in one long spiral. These things, lighten anything - the heavy of this unintelligible world. And for once, a three word prayer feels as natural as breathing:

I love you, without question.

Perhaps the same circuit went off in her brain: the way you sat, the way you slept, the way you hunch over the computer. And she, too, said:

I love you.

The next day, you went to her uncle's grave. Lived 64 years, a minimal grave placed right to her wife -

who passed earlier.

Do you think I'll be like my uncle if you go?

Possibly. You pull her tighter, hand caressing the wool of her jacket - the calculus changes.

The black-and-white photograph of her uncle and his wife was attached to the granite, before she died - captioned and signed by the uncle 'I love you, I love you, I love you, dear wife. let's have a long life together, dear.' - before she went, he had used the full words of love.

Not lv.

Maybe it's all a cycle, she whispers under her breath.